BALLSTON LAKE -- With his bid to hold onto his 20th District congressional seat too close to call, Rep. Scott Murphy is calling in the Democratic Party's most-marquee names to drum up excitement.

Sunday it will be Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, who represented the 10-county district in the House of Representatives until 2009, when Murphy won a special election to replace her. And Monday it will be former President Bill Clinton, who is expected to draw more than 1,000 people to a rally at the Hall of Springs in Saratoga Spa State Park.

Saturday, it was Andrew Cuomo, the attorney general and front-running gubernatorial candidate, who praised Murphy as "important not just for this district, but for this nation" before 300 people at Lakeside Farm and Cider Mill.

"We know we've got a lot of folks we've got to get to the polls to win this election; it's going to be very close," Murphy, D-Glens Falls, said. "I'm very excited to have Andrew Cuomo here today talking about his plans to move upstate New York's economy forward and the kind of common-sense solutions that I want to use to get upstate New York's economy moving forward, and things I want to do as a businessman to get people back to work."

That's been his campaign's message in a nutshell. He and his Republican opponent, retired Army Col. Chris Gibson, have sparred over whether to extend Bush-era income tax cuts -- Gibson would extend all the cuts, Murphy would let cuts for those earning more than $250,000 lapse -- whether to leave in place a health care reform bill Murphy supported, and the utility of government stimulus spending to prevent job losses.

Murphy has supported such spending and argues that it has created jobs. Gibson has said it simply forestalls needed cuts and restructuring, and makes the federal deficit balloon dangerously.

Polls show the men have argued to a standstill, and the airwaves are flooded with advertisements produced by both campaigns and Washington-based political and interest groups.

"The thing that is most important in the final 72 hours is a campaign to try and identify their voters and ensure they vote on Tuesday," said Steve Greenberg, a spokesman for the Siena Research Institute. "Particularly for Murphy, who is nine points behind heading into the final days and facing an electorate that has more Republicans than Democrats, it's incumbent on him to get his voters to the polls."

Democrats say other polls have Murphy slightly ahead, and the Siena poll to which Greenberg referred had 6 percent of voters still undecided.

But the push on the ground is on. The candidates are appearing in public wherever a crowd might be found -- from a gun show to a high school football game. Gibson's volunteers gathered Saturday morning at his campaign headquarters in Clifton Park, ready to walk door to door. Roughly 100 showed up to walk around Clifton Park and Halfmoon -- two populous suburban towns in which elected Democrats are rare -- to drop off fliers showing Gibson as a "fiscally conservative combat veteran."

While Murphy rallied with Cuomo and other elected Democrats representing Albany and Schenectady counties, outside his district, Gibson cheered on 200 volunteers outside his strip-mall office.

"He has Cuomo there Saturday, and Chris alone nearly matched the number of people at the rally," Gibson's spokesman, Dan Odescalchi, said. "Chris is a big draw -- people come to see him. He doesn't need surrogates and other political bigwigs to draw a crowd on his behalf."

Several Gibson volunteers said they were campaigning for the first time. They were upset with the direction of the country, which national pollsters and pundits have said is a common feeling expected to fuel Republican gains.

"It's a combination of the national mood, absolutely, and Chris," said Steve Bulger, Gibson's volunteer coordinator in Saratoga County. He promised there would be Republicans waving signs outside the Clinton rally on Monday.

In addition to the big names, Murphy's campaign also flooded the streets with volunteers, many organized by labor unions working on a coordinated Democratic effort.

Murphy acknowledged that it would be close in the push to the end. "We know it's going to be close," he said. "We've always known it's going to be close."